Niger.

 

                                                      Image courtesy of BBC.

           Our imperial masters don't like the goodies they pillaged from the lands they stole in their imperialist wars to go anywhere except to their benefit. France is in a tizzy because the people of Niger decided that they no longer want the rich resources of their land to be plundered and pillaged to the benefit of imperialist France and the West. France and other Western countries are quite prepare to shed the blood of other nations to protect their golden goose. Hence they are encouraging, probably exerting some pressure on, the coterie of their puppet governments in that part of Africa, the (ECOWAS) Economic Community of West African States, to marshal up their forces and invade Niger, no doubt with a bit of help from the West. What is at stake is not the well being of the people of Niger not the defence of democracy, but the rich source of uranium, oil and gold. Niger is very rich country in resources, and all those riches go to feed the western corporations while making sure the resident population of Niger live in poverty. However, it is not all going to the imperialist's plan, on Wednesday 16th August (AU) the African Union stated that it will not support military intervention in Niger to return the ousted President. No doubt the imperialist nations of France and U$A will continue to push for war. For them it is a no loss situation, the citizens of Africa will supply the blood, death and destruction, the West will supply the arms, booty for the Western Military Industrial Complex. Shades of Ukraine. 

Image courtesy of AP NEWS.

 

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Disobey.

          We all know that governments start wars, always preceded with the usual bubblegum and popcorn patriotic propaganda about standing up to evil, defending democracy and other phoney bullshit. No matter the trumpeting before the slaughter, the aim is always the same, power and control over resources, defending the wealth, power and privileges of the pampered parasites that control our lives. We also know that it entails the slaughter of the targeted civilian population, of course labelled a just and good cause.

 

         Why do we continue to be fooled by this smoke and mirrors of the state, we know wars never benefit the ordinary people of the aggressor state, nor of the people at the receiving end of the bloodshed, and we know that the ordinary people's blood is shed on both sides, but not that of the psychopaths that plan, gain from and execute these barbaric acts.

 I shall not serve.

          Wars only happen if we obey, so why obey, so many willingly serve this savagery and as long as we have those who serve we will have leaders and wars. Servitude and all its attendant evils disappear if we just walk away and disobey. We could do well to remember the words of Étienne de La Boétie.

            “The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.”

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info     

Thoughts.

Some random thoughts: 

A Bloody Game Of Chess.

Every brick, every bullet, each bomb and tank
by our labouring hands is fashioned
We build the prisons that cage our neighbours
man the guns that kill our brothers and sisters
we drive the tanks that smash their homes
fly the planes that bomb their villages
spreading the blood of innocence across the land
we seldom know or ask the reason why
nor question the orders given
this a tragic game of savagery
played by unseen powerful hands
we their pawns wait to be pushed
into their desired position
the prize
blood soaked gold for the few. 

Compassion.

Sometimes our strength breaks
not because of the burdens in our life
but because of our compassion
As year in year out we bear witness
to the savage claws of poverty
rip into the hearts of a legion of children
watch our green Earth stained red
with the blood of innocents in endless wars
standing silently by an see the young and old
die slowly from avoidable disease
and tragedy of human created disasters
compassion a necessary component
of that better world we all crave
but a crushing burden in this world
fashioned by greed power and privilege.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info 

Uncle Willie.

My Uncle Willie.

         To those who know me there will be no doubt in their minds about my hatred of the economic system we bleed under. In my eighties now, I have seen this system destroy individuals, tear families apart, and in its voracious greed for profit and power, it has murdered and maimed countless millions in its endless wars. Each individual destroyed, each family torn apart, each war grave, and each veterans hospital are all indictments against a system where people are sacrificed to keep the system functioning for the benefit of a small cabal of over privileged parasites. You would think that our humanity would demand that the system should be altered, modified and shaped to meet the needs of the the people, not the other way round.
        As we look at this society we can see all around us, those unfortunate individuals whose lives are deeply scarred by a system that uses people to perpetuate its greed driven machinations. It is so easy to encapsulate the ruthless viciousness of the system in one person's life, to me my uncle Willie is such a person. To the system, a nobody, a human being of no significance, but to those around him, a father, a son, a brother, a husband and an uncle.
        My uncle Willie was my mother's younger brother, naturally I didn't know him in his early years, but I heard the stories. Willie, like the rest of my family, lived in Garngad, a Glasgow slum in the north of the city. A young man in his 20’s, he was married and had three kids, and like so many of that era, unemployed. It seems that Willie was a family man and loved his kids, he could be seen most days walking with them along the waste ground off Charles Street at the back of Glenconner Park, usually two kids running in front and the youngest on his shoulders. It seems he was an excellent snooker/billiards player, and that is where he supplemented his income, by playing round the many snooker halls in Glasgow. However to the system, he was superfluous to requirements, so could scrape a living in the slums of Glasgow as best he could. 

 

       Then, suddenly, he is a valuable asset to the system, 1939, WWII starts, and Willie is scooped up and shipped out to Egypt. We no nothing of his experiences there, but after three years there and later his demob, he returned home with malaria, this is when I got to know him, just a little. His shaking hands, the troubled look in his eyes. His return to civilian life didn't get off to a good start, on returning home to his family, of wife and three kids, he discovered that he now had five kids. This was the end of his marriage, the family broke up, and Willie moved from job to job, and his drinking got worse and he eventually couldn't hold a job, he was now an alcoholic and homeless. Moving from homeless hostel to homeless hostel, occasionally staying with family, but his alcoholism made that an ever decreasing possibility.
       I remember my mother, a church goer and anti-drink woman, on many an occasion, looking out the window and saying, “Oh here's Willie coming”, then a pause, then, “he doesn't look too drunk”. He would sit and chat to his big sister and myself, my mother would make him something to eat and give a cup of tea. Though it was never a full cup of tea, his hands were shaking so bad it would have been all over him, she only quarter filled the cup and kept topping it up, it was his troubled eyes that have stuck with me all these years, as he was leaving, my mother would slip a 10 shilling note into his hand. 

 

       Willie spent the rest of his years moving around hostels for the homeless, eventually dying in one down in Ardrossan in his fifties. To me, my uncle Willie epitomises this stinking system, you're a worthless entity, left to rot unless the system needs you, either to make its profits, or to fight its imperialist wars, and your reward for either of these activities, if anything at all, is never anything grand, usually nothing or suffering.

 

The Warmth of a Dream.

 

He lay in a dark doorway, dreamed of home,

night frost locked his joints

morning rain chilled the marrow of his bones.

In the dream there was a sister, 

a pram in a garden, a crowd of youngsters

who called him "mister", a time of little pain.

Are these youngsters the same young men, who

now laugh at him, throw beer cans, 

piss on him as he lies drunk in some dark lane?

When was that first step to no forgiveness.

No will to rise to beg for food,

numbness kills the pain.

The dream brings a warmth that feels good,

dark fog shades out consciousness,

an ambulance carries off a body washed in rain.

 

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk    

Quiet Bye-way.

     We live in a world where Covid19 casts a dark and frightening shadow, where the blood of imperial conflicts colour the seas and stain the land, where armies of innocent flee across man made borders to be greeted with cruelty and humiliation, where hunger's cruel claws tear at the young and the old. It is our world, a world we can't escape from but can try to alter. However from time to time I take a walk down another bye-way and seek a little respite in the land of poetry. Today I'll take that stroll.

     Though I like a laugh and a giggle, most of you who have read anything I have written will realise that those features seldom, if ever, find their way in to my written word. 

    The following poems are all from a wee book called, "They say I'm Crazy."

A couple on my mother's death:

The Lonely Wynd.

At the bed, death's waiting room,

the family muster,

with empty words wrapped in thoughts of death,

gaily chatter.

Outside, hungry birds feed, sing and fly,

their chirpy songs seem to call her death a lie,

but summer's sun

reaching through the window pane

sadly smiles,

knowing they'll never meet again.

I wonder,

in coma wrapped, what were your thoughts.

Pleasure,

looking back at what used to be?

Pride,

at how, to this life happiness you brought?

Perhaps it was a welcome rest from pain

a just pause in your long struggle,

alas too late, this enigma with me remains.

So rest, in your rest peace be your gain

for you dear mother, an end to trouble

as love's boundless force could not break

death's firm grasp upon your heart,

passionless devouring cancer 

unmoved by prayer on our part, 

took your hand along that lonely wynd,

death took time

fused the moment on our mind.

In the midst of family

alone dear mother you had to die.

That Part Of My Life.

Everywhere I walk,

she dies.

I walk the leaf covered park alone,

she dies.

In each glen, by each loch,

she dies.

In the midst of each merry throng,

she dies.

With everyone I meet,

she dies.

each time I think of times gone by,

she dies.

When the future I try to grasp,

she dies.

There is no place  can hide from

her death.

There is no act that can obscure

her death.

My life is now marked by

her death.

Her death now shapes my life.

On Western imperialism.

Remember Iraq.

Mammon, God of the New World Order

has spoken:

Any nation who blasphemes 

against the scriptures

of the Holy Free Market economy

shall find its people scorched by fires

that rain out of the western skies

and the people shall suffer perdition

through all eternity. 

All the world shall see

Mammon's hi-tec retribution.

A couple of personal views.

The Illusion.

How frail we are

how tenuous our hold,

what a strange trick of nature

that we should feel so bold.

To life tied by a silken thread

burning youth,

a new world vows to mould,

oblivious, as fate blindly cuts the thread,

without a sigh,    leaves sweet youth so cold.

Middle age with confidence comes,

experience expands the illusion.

We cover the world in words of wisdom

believing we

lead nature to the right conclusion,

but she with ease, a beauty all her own,

shows our naive plans as utter confusion.

At what age will we realise,

we always pay for our arrogant intrusion.

In old age we accept the fact

our time in nature's span is small.

How rich, life in nature's domain could be

if to foul greed we refuse to fall.

Accept, we as beggars in her presence stand,

man can flourish and grow tall,

act as her lord and master,

she'll cast man aside like a cheap rag doll. 

Buried Treasure.

Rich,    man I'm rich,

this life, this treasure chest of mine,

crammed full.

Those moments of ecstasy with forgotten names,

burning loves that broke the rules,

quiet meetings that burst into flames,

short lived loves

sealed with brittle vows.

Passions that sparkled and flashed

bringing warmth,     even now.

Ruby red anguish that shaped my heart,

diamond friendships this world can't part,

a son that changed this world to gold

adding pride to my treasure chest.

A daughter brought radiance beyond compare,

of precious gems,     they gave the best.

These jewels, these precious stones

this bounty beyond belief

all mine,

outshines a prince's throne.

A couple on the death of my dad.

Ten Years.

It's been ten years since, dad,

do you still remember,

how your coaldust cover body

clawed in that dark abyss

for your share of sixpence

to feed your hungry kids?

I do.

Do you still remember,

how each day you descended into

that dark hell, laid your life

on the line, just to clothe

your family and your wife? 

I do.

Do you still remember,

how throwing crumbs from the window,

with skill the blackie's song you imitated;

settling down with a smile,

the humble comforts of our home appreciated?

I do.

Well dad,

it's been ten years since you died,

I still remember this and much more.

Then I always will ------- for a portrait

of your humble courage

hangs on a wall,

somewhere in my heart.

The Gift.

You promised me Jerusalem

a socialist paradise,

I have world

of greed,

brutality and lies.

You promised me Jerusalem

a land of hope and plenty.

I have a world

of want,

fear and envy.

Still,

from the bottom of my heart

I thank you for your gift,

a precious dream. I thank you dad,

for all your life you tried. 

Just a thought:

The Seasons.

When you look, it's plain to see,

spring has crossed these mountains,

--------------many years before;

kissed their slopes, with shoots of hope,

promised so much more.

Then sweeping in, in a blaze of life,

summer saw the promises bloom,

---------------many years before;

bathed the dreams, in bounteous streams,

birds began to soar.

So with stealth, and deceptive charm,

autumn cooled the gurgling streams,

-----------------many years before;

slowed their pace, to one of grace,

quietly closed a door.

Now with vulgar haste, and callous force,

winter assaults those mighty peaks,

----------------of many years before;

as gathering clouds, spread their shroud,

memories start to pour.  

       I hope my little wander down that bye-way brought something to you, and prodded you mind away, for a while, from our Covid19 plagued and trouble strewn world.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Price Of Conscience.

 

 

     There were those who through WW1 and WW2 were reviled, insulted, beaten up, imprisoned, and treated to a whole host of other brutal and degrading treatments. There crime, they were conscientious objectors and refused to kill other human beings on the dictate of the state. The state takes a very strong dislike to those who will not kill on its orders. The state always demands obedience, submission and subservience, it must always have control over the population. it is estimated that there were approximately 60,000 men registered as conscientious objectors during the first world war.
     Conscientious objectors are humans with a conscience, something that will not be tolerated by the state in times of its wars of plunder and power grabbing, which takes in almost all wars.
     Anarchists feature strongly in that band of conscientious objectors, as did Quakers. These people were usually labelled cowards, though the courage they showed in the presence hatred and abuse demanded much more courage than to submit and become a subservient order taker.
     Some did take their place in the military, but usually only as medics and ambulance drivers. Which ever road the took, it required courage, determination and perseverance. Their history is seldom, if ever, written in that frame.

      A brief sample of their history can be found here and also found HERE:

     As one small glimpse of those labelled cowards who opted for non-combatant roles and went as medics etc. this extract gives a tiny insight into the falseness of that label. others of course faced brutality  in prisons up and down the country.  

The burial detail, which had come for the corpses in the pigpen, was surprised. The “dead” were getting up and speaking English. Qu’est-ce que c’est? Ah, they were an ambulance crew. British volunteers, in the trenches with the French Army on the Western Front. In the ruins and wreckage near the front lines, they’d found nowhere else to sleep.

The medical corpsmen were all pacifists, serving humanity even as they refused to serve in any military. Still, they lived like the troops. They bunked in rat-infested dugouts, on the floors of shelled buildings, in hay-filled barns. They dove for cover when incoming shells moaned and screamed, and struggled with their masks when the enemy fired gas canisters. At any moment, they could be called to go to the front lines, gather wounded men, and drive—lights off on roads cratered by shells, packed with trucks and troops, with every jostle making the blood-soaked soldiers in the back cry out in pain—to a hospital.

      Today it is more obvious than ever that all wars are fought to enhance the wealth and power of the privileged, to protect or increase the resources to be exploited for those same privileged, to increase their power over competitors. However they are never fought by those privileged, there aren't enough of them to protect their wealthy and privileged position, hence their demand that we the ordinary people do the fighting for them. We are tasked with killing ordinary people from over there, so that our pampered, privileged lords and masters can maintain their powerful and wealthy position.  Still so many still fall for this preposterous policy, the reality being that the only war that the ordinary people should fight is the class war.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Disobedience.

     Two pieces of information I recently read, to me highlight the dreadful state of our world today. The first is the human savagery that results in the fact that every ten minutes a Yemeni child under 5 years of age dies of hunger. The other is the state to which we have driven the planet, the recent Australian fires have more or less wiped out the Koalas, having destroyed 80% of their habitat.

    There is much more, millions of people across the globe are on the streets fighting to end inequality, injustice, corruption and state brutality. We have devised a system that perpetuates wide spread poverty, injustice and corruption. A system that spawns wars and all the misery, death and destruction that goes with those wars. A system that has driven life on our planet to the edge of extinction. None of this was an unforeseen accident, nor was it inevitable, it was driven by blind greed and deliberate exploitation. If we continue down this road, sadly those driving this human tragedy will not be the only ones to suffer as the inevitable collapse unfolds.

     It may already be too late, even so, humanity that desires that decent world for all, must continue and re-double every effort, and find new imaginative ways to destroy this economic disastrous system and halt this man made disaster. We just can't throw our hands in the air, continue as we are, and watch our grandchildren's future disappear in a brutal man made extinction.

     The following quote is one answer to our problem:

     "You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get there kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So isn't disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth." Richard Grossman

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War Is Not a Game.

        Any observer of our society would be well aware that we are a warring society. Through the onslaught from the babbling brook of bullshit, that is our mainstream media, with its war movies, stories of "great" battles, and war heroes, their justification for every war in which we have ever been involved. Then there is the "games" fed to our kids, super-human heroes, winning fierce battles over the bad guys, games of war, killing sprees where the player enjoys killing and never feels the pain of hot shrapnel tearing through their flesh, and knows that at the end of this violent indulgence, they can walk away unscathed, a million miles from the real killing sprees into which the state throws our kids. 

Of course we should not forget those callous military recruiting teams that infiltrate our schools, targeting the poorest areas.

 This is war.

      All the state has to do is reap this harvest and dispatch them to fight the imperialist wars that it indulges in at the behest of the corporate giants, who are ever hungry for more resources and markets, all gained from the blood of our youth.

 This is war.

     The armed forces make around 11,000 visits to secondary schools and colleges schools in the UK each year, and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) spends around £26 million each year on school Combined Cadet
Force (CCF) units, both of which have a strong recruitment agenda behind them, contrary to the repeated denials of this in recent years by the MoD

      Marlborough science academy is one of thousands of UK schools to invite in the military. Today, as part of an Insight Into Industry event, the army and other organisations – including the fire and rescue service, Marks & Spencer, and Hertfordshire University – are giving students an insider’s view of their work. Next to the assault course is a display showing salary scales for all military ranks, and male and female soldiers from different units are on hand to answer questions.

         We recommend that the Welsh Government considers whether further research is needed into the reasons for the apparently disproportionate number of visits to schools in areas of relatively high deprivation.

  Concerns over how many visits army officers make to schools in deprived areas will be debated by assembly members on Wednesday.

 The British Regular Army visits schools as a major part of its recruitment programme and a third of new soldier recruits are aged under 18. These recruits may face serious personal risk and challenging moral dilemmas, yet their terms of service can prevent them from leaving the army for up to six years. Given that minors are less able than adults to make free, informed and responsible decisions about enlisting, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the House of Commons/Lords Joint Committee on Human Rights have recommended raising the minimum age of recruitment to 18. Both Committees also recommend that the UK ensure that disadvantaged communities are not targeted for recruitment.

 This is war.

      If we wish peace to be the main picture of our society, then we have to stop the military from the callous recruiting of kids, which happens mainly in poor and deprived areas, all with the blessing of the state. We have to ban all military recruiting teams from anywhere near a school. Schools are supposed to be a safe and welcoming environment for the enlightenment and development of our kids, allowing them to make balanced and informed decisions as adults, they are not to be a conveyor belt of cannon fodder for the interests of a profit greedy corporate world.

This is war.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Robert Newman- History of Oil.

     This is a few years old, but I still think it is worthwhile repeating.First published on Mar 6, 2012, Robert Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years - but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at school, he places oil centre stage as the cause of all the commotion.

      As remembrance day approaches, this is one way of bring home the truth about the carnage of imperialist continuous wars for resources. Humour is a wonderful way of spreading truth. Well worth viewing the entire piece.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Voice of An Imerialist Soldier.

      We all know, or should know that the invasion of Iraq was based on a false picture, an illusion created by the Western imperial states and propagated by that vile babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media. However it is still good to keep hearing it, and driving home the truth, that wars are about resources, power and wealth for that secret cabal sitting in the marble halls of power. 

     I saw this personal account of the vile nature that inevitably creeps into the individuals that find themselves caught up in these imperialist brutal wars, on the arrezafe site.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

My Uncle Willie.

My Uncle Willie.

        To those who know me, there will be no doubt in their minds about my hatred of the economic system we bleed under. In my eighties now, I have seen this system destroy individuals, tear families apart, and in its voracious greed for profit and power, it has murdered and maimed countless millions in its endless wars. Each individual destroyed, each family torn apart, each war grave, and each veterans hospital are all indictments against a system where people are sacrificed to keep the system functioning for the benefit of a small cabal of over privileged parasites. You would think that our humanity would demand that the system should be altered, modified and shaped to meet the needs of the people, not the other way round.
       As we look at this society we can see all around us, those unfortunate individuals whose lives are deeply scarred by a system that uses people to perpetuate its greed driven machinations. It is so easy to encapsulate the ruthless viciousness of the system in one person's life, to me my uncle Willie is such a person. To the system, a nobody, a human being of no significance, but to those around him, a friend, a father, a son, a brother, a husband and an uncle.
       My uncle Willie was my mother's younger brother, naturally I didn't know him in his early years, but I heard the stories. Willie, like the rest of my family, lived in Garngad, a Glasgow slum in the north of the city. A young man in the 30's, he was married and had three kids, and like so many of that era, unemployed. It seems that Willie was a family man and loved his kids, he could be seen most days walking with them along the waste ground off Charles Street at the back of Glenconner Park, usually two kids running in front and the youngest on his shoulders. It seems he was an excellent snooker player, and that is where he supplemented his income, by playing round the many snooker halls in Glasgow. However to the system, he was superfluous to requirements, so could scrape a living in the slums of Glasgow as best he could.
      Then, suddenly, he is a valuable asset to the system, 1939, WWII starts, and Willie is scooped up and shipped out to Egypt. We know nothing of his experiences there, but after three years there and later his demob, he returned home with malaria, this is when I got to know him, just a little. His shaking hands, the troubled look in his eyes. His return to civilian life didn't get off to a good start, on returning home to his family, of wife and three kids, he discovered that he now had five kids. This was the end of his marriage, the family broke up, and Willie moved from job to job, and his drinking got worse and he eventually couldn't hold a job, he was now an alcoholic and homeless. Moving from homeless hostel to homeless hostel, occasionally staying with family, but his alcoholism made that an ever decreasing possibility.
       I remember my mother on many an occasion, looking out the window and saying, "Oh, here's Willie coming", then a pause, then, "he doesn't look too drunk". He would sit and chat to his big sister and myself, my mother would make him something to eat and give a cup of tea. Though, it was never a full cup of tea, his hands were shaking so bad, a full cup would have been all over him, she only quarter filled the cup and kept topping it up, it was his troubled eyes that have stuck with me all these years, as he was leaving, my mother would slip a 10 shilling note into his hand.
        Willie spent the rest of his years moving around hostels for the homeless, eventually dying in one down in Ardrossan in his fifties.
       To me, my uncle Willie epitomises this stinking system, you're a worthless entity, left to rot unless the system needs you, either to make its profits, or to fight its imperialist wars, and your reward for either of these activities, is never anything worth having. 

The Homeless.

Tenebrous spectres, they exist,    out there,

on the crumbling edge of chaos,

a father, a son, a brother,

a daughter, a sister, a mother.

Fragments of some shattered family structure;

waste products

from a society being driven to destruction

by a hurricane of greed,

living a life that wears out life,

dying,

the devious death of exhaustion from existence. 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk